Wikipedia - caveat lector
One of my all-time favorite web sites is Wikipedia. I use it all the time and link to it frequently. I also tell my kids to use it for their school work when they are researching... more or less anything. It almost always gets them started on a good track. If you don't already know about it, you should, and you should make sure your kids do too.
But it has limitations that are important to know about. These problems made a widely noticed splash this week when an associate of RFK sued the site for publishing false information about him. This problem is far from new and far from secret. It is the strength of the wiki concept and its weakness that anyone can contribute anything to the site. You could go there right now and alter Einstein's bio to say he played for the Boston Celtics, or was the pope in 1247. No problem. Of course, anyone can come right behind you and erase your bogus contributions. Naturally, there is a page devoted to Wikipedia vandalism that notes that most "breaches" are corrected within five minutes! That same page offers the important advice that users should always examine the page history to get a sense of the relative stability of the information on the page. For instance, George Bush's page was edited over 120 times on December 8th. A clear sign that something is amiss, or at least unsettled. Another protection comes form learning how to cite Wikipedia articles.
The open, transparent, self-policing, self-correcting wiki mechanism works well almost all of the time. Especially for content that is relatively well known and not controversial — the kind of information grade school students need — the risks are minimal. Still, the risk of disinformation is real. So this week changes were made to the editorial policy. But the changes are pretty minimal. You or I cannot go and add new pages to the site unless we register. But we can still deface Einstein's page anytime we want. So I'm not so sure the new changes are all that substantive. But I'm not complaining. There is no need to fix something that really is not broke.
As with any information gleaned from the web, caveat lector. Be sure to find multiple trusted sources.
But it has limitations that are important to know about. These problems made a widely noticed splash this week when an associate of RFK sued the site for publishing false information about him. This problem is far from new and far from secret. It is the strength of the wiki concept and its weakness that anyone can contribute anything to the site. You could go there right now and alter Einstein's bio to say he played for the Boston Celtics, or was the pope in 1247. No problem. Of course, anyone can come right behind you and erase your bogus contributions. Naturally, there is a page devoted to Wikipedia vandalism that notes that most "breaches" are corrected within five minutes! That same page offers the important advice that users should always examine the page history to get a sense of the relative stability of the information on the page. For instance, George Bush's page was edited over 120 times on December 8th. A clear sign that something is amiss, or at least unsettled. Another protection comes form learning how to cite Wikipedia articles.
The open, transparent, self-policing, self-correcting wiki mechanism works well almost all of the time. Especially for content that is relatively well known and not controversial — the kind of information grade school students need — the risks are minimal. Still, the risk of disinformation is real. So this week changes were made to the editorial policy. But the changes are pretty minimal. You or I cannot go and add new pages to the site unless we register. But we can still deface Einstein's page anytime we want. So I'm not so sure the new changes are all that substantive. But I'm not complaining. There is no need to fix something that really is not broke.
As with any information gleaned from the web, caveat lector. Be sure to find multiple trusted sources.
2 Comments:
In my experience, vandals do not limit their activities to controversial pages, and even pages grades school students might use may be vandalized. And vandalism is less likely to be quickly corrected on "non-controversial pages."
See my blog post on this.
True, the lawsuit involves a slander that went uncorrected, and probably unnoticed, for months on a relatively obscure page. There are many, many forms of vandalism and some involve planting disinformation where it might stick for a time. Still, well read pages about relatively non-controversial information are where Wikipedia is most reliable.
The problem of trust is real. And for that reason one must be careful about using Wikipedia as a sole source, or without careful scrutiny of the information. That does not negate the value of the information that it provides. In my studies I used encyclopedias as a pathway to other sources, a way of surveying a subject and finding areas where I needed to drill down deeper in more authoritative sources.
I still think Wikipedia is invaluable for that.
Post a Comment
<< Home